By Sue Greenwald

In two recent Davis Enterprise pieces, I was quoted as saying that the planned replacement of the historic Yolo County Courthouse will cost three times as much to build as the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis.

Since my name has been mentioned twice regarding the $173 million cost of this replacement courthouse, I believe I should explain my thoughts in my own words.

My concern is not merely with the $173 million cost of the replacement courthouse. It is with the entire $5 billion cost of the statewide courthouse construction bonds, which are currently under the radar screen.

Although we are facing extraordinarily difficult fiscal challenges in state and local government, the Legislature has passed a bill authorizing $5 billion worth of bonds for courthouse construction. These bonds have been authorized but not yet issued.

They are to be paid for by fees and fines, including revenue from a $4.50 surcharge on parking tickets and more than half of the revenue from traffic tickets.

Should we be building grand new replacement courthouses in this time of fiscal hardship, or should the money be put to other uses? These are legitimate questions. We have options.

All or part of the revenue stream from the fines and fees levied to pay for this $5 billion bond could be used to help defray the costs of court operations and maintenance. This would free up funds to close the state budget deficit or to help fund the university, schools, cities or social services.

With the proper state legislative actions, it would absolutely be both legal and constitutional to redirect these revenues.

Other needs

I appreciate expensive, elegant and beautiful public buildings as much as anyone, but I am raising the question of today’s priorities. We are facing a shrinking pie while experiencing a general shift of funds toward the prison/court system and away from our state universities.

Our cities, schools and social services are underfunded, both in terms of operations and in terms of capital construction and replacement costs. We don’t even have the money to replace disintegrating low-budget chip seal recently used on our neighborhood streets.

Our citizens and our representatives should be thinking long and hard about our statewide priorities.

The planned Yolo County courthouse replacement is but one small example of the enormous sums of money about to be spent statewide on courthouse construction. It is but one example, but it is an example with which I am familiar.

The existing Yolo County Courthouse is a magnificent old building in downtown Woodland. It is slated to be vacated and replaced with a massive and very expensive five-story building, which, according to a county spokesperson, is “built for the future” — presumably a future of even more explosive growth of our court/prison system. The title of the empty old courthouse will be handed over to the county.

Although one of the justifications for replacing the historic courthouse is the cramped conditions for those in the jury pool, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed spending time in this building during my recent stint as a prospective juror despite the somewhat crowded conditions.

And surely, one of the reasons for the somewhat crowded conditions in the courthouse is the recent explosion in the number of trials for which Yolo County has come under increasing criticism.

Additional reasons cited for needing an entirely new courthouse include old plumbing, mold on a bathroom ceiling on the first level, and a desire to consolidate courtrooms that now exist in a few different Woodland locations so that judges will not have to occasionally travel between buildings.

Many of these sub-optimal conditions could be remediated for far less than $175 million. Others are similar to conditions that we all live with — certainly, our city buildings are cramped, modest and scattered all over town. Our community development staff is jammed into a temporary trailer attached to the west end of City Hall.

We would be happy to have a few million dollars to build a permanent annex to replace the temporary trailers. But we don’t need to spend more than $100 million to tear down City Hall and build a luxurious new building in order to consolidate our operations.

The court replacement project envisioned for Yolo County is very expensive. We are a county of only 200,000 residents. The project’s cost will equate to about $2,500 for each house and apartment unit in the county. It will cost about three times as much as the Mondavi Center.

The $173 million cost would pay for the entire city of Davis unfunded employee medical liability three times over.

In other words, $173 million is a lot of money by Yolo County standards, and $5 billion is a lot of money by state of California standards.

Re-examine priorities

Polls show that Californians believe we should be scaling back the growth of and expenditures for the court/prison system. This is a far cry from the current plans for large-scale court construction spending in expectation of future growth in the number of court cases.

Technically speaking, the Legislature could rescind the court construction bill and pass new legislation imposing identical fees to pay for court operations and maintenance. This would free up the all or part of the $5 billion to eliminate the budget deficit or to redirect it to other uses. To do so would be both constitutional and would pass the nexus test.

I might as well say it simply: Let’s place the $5 billion court construction bonds on the table alongside everything else.

— Sue Greenwald is a resident of Davis and a member of the Davis City Council.

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Supporters of a move to replace the Yolo County Courthouse at 725 Court St. in Woodland say the historic structure is too small and ill-suited to the needs of today’s judicial system. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise file photo

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